* WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS *
ISSUE #414, JANUARY 4, 1998
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK

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MEXICAN ARMY INCURSION IN REBEL TOWN

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In its most aggressive act against the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) since an unsuccessful offensive in February 1995, on Jan. 3 the Mexican army sent almost 200 soldiers in 26 vehicles to La Realidad Trinidad, a community in the southeastern state of Chiapas which the rebels have used as a sort of headquarters over the last three years. According to eyewitness reports, the soldiers arrived near La Realidad at about 8 am, fanning out through the area around the community and questioning--and sometimes threatening--campesinos. The incursion ended at some point in the afternoon, and the soldiers withdrew to their base about 10 miles away. There are no confirmed incidents of violence, and the troops never occupied "Aguascalientes," the large meeting place the EZLN uses for public events. The military also ran surveillance flights over the town during the operation, which the military said was a search for weapons. [Associated Press 1/3/98; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/4/98]

Previously, small military patrols had driven through the community--which is in Las Margaritas municipality (county) in the south-central part of the state, near the Guatemala border-- but the Jan. 3 incident was a significant escalation. La Realidad residents packed their belongings and cooked food to be able to flee if the soldiers attacked. "They have never come so close," Ramon Gutierrez, a local campesino, told the Associated Press. "We had a meeting this afternoon because we think the army wants to take the town, but we have decided to stay. If that's what they want, they can finish us all off." [AP 1/3/98]

The brief incursion caused panic in pro-rebel communities throughout the state, already tense because of a Dec. 22 massacre of 45 unarmed civilians by a rightwing paramilitary group in Acteal, San Pedro de Chenalho municipality in the north [see Update #413]. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the Catholic diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas in the northern highlands area, and the EZLN's civilian group, the Zapatista National Liberation Front (FZLN), received false reports that the military had seized La Realidad, and that EZLN headquarters had been bombed. The diocese also received a report that the military's surveillance flights had received orders in English referring to a huge "military operation" on land and sea; diocese spokesperson Father Gonzalo Ituarte said there were tapes of the conversations, captured by shortwave radio, but that they were probably not from the La Realidad area and had no relation to the incursion there. [FZLN communique 1/3/98; LJ 1/4/98] Far from being under attack, the EZLN issued a communique stating that "[c]ommunication was cut off at 12 noon on Jan. 3 and we didn't know what the situation was in the community of La Realidad or how the companeros were." [EZLN communique 1/3/98] [There were also unconfirmed reports that paramilitary groups took 40 Mexican and international solidarity volunteers hostage in Oventic, north of San Cristobal; the reports said 30 of the hostages were subsequently released. [FZLN Communique 1/3/98; Information posted on Internet from doctor at Gestion de Servicios de Salud (San Cristobal) 1/3/98]]

The British news service Reuter quickly picked up the story of military activity in La Realidad, citing an eyewitness. The Spanish news service EFE cited unnamed "military sources" as saying that the army had "taken" the town. [Reuter 1/3/98; El Mundo (Spain) 1/3/98 from EFE] The Mexican National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) 7th Military Region (Chiapas) denounced the "rumor" of military action in La Realidad as "a deliberate act of provocation"--presumably by the EZLN and the diocese--"to confuse public opinion and, for unknown reasons, to alter the environment in the Chiapas Highlands." [LJ 1/4/98] [Both accurate and inaccurate accounts of the events circulated on the Internet during the day, mobilizing EZLN supporters in Mexico and internationally. New Yorkers organized a vigil at the Mexican consulate before midnight on Jan. 3.]

At the same time that the Mexican military was stepping up pressure on the EZLN on Jan. 3, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon announced the resignation of Governance Secretary Emilio Chuayffet Chemor, a conservative in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who held the post since June 1995. The governance secretary handles internal security and is usually the most powerful member of the cabinet. Chuayffet's predecessor, Esteban Moctezuma Barragan, was fired after the massacre of 17 leftist campesinos by police in Aguas Blancas in the southwestern state of Guerrero [see Update #283]. Although Zedillo said Chuayffet resigned for personal reasons, most analysts assume that the resignation was a de facto admission by the government of its responsibility for the Acteal massacre, allegedly organized by the PRI president of Chenalho municipality. Agriculture Secretary Francisco Labastida Ochoa was named to replace Chuayffet. "We will spare no effort, and the will to achieve peace will not fail," Labastida announced, implying that Chuayffet was responsible for the stalling of peace talks with the EZLN since September 1996. [LJ 1/4/98; New York Times 1/4/98]

But the government's actions suggest that its strategy is actually to increase the militarization of the state under the pretext of disarming both the rebels and the paramilitary groups. On Jan. 1 the military authorities announced that an army unit specializing in counterinsurgency had discovered an arms cache in the community of San Miguel Chiptic in Altamirano municipality; the military suggested that the arms belonged to EZLN sympathizers. [Agence France Presse 1/1/98] The next day, on Jan. 2, the 7th Military Region command announced that there would be "intensive" patrols and roadblocks in three parts of the state: the north, the Highlands and the Lacandona Forest. Indigenous organizations say the military has set up 20 roadblocks in Ocosingo, Altamirano, Las Margaritas and Palenque municipalities, and that the searches carried out are thorough and sometimes "aggressive." [LJ 1/3/98] According to Nuevo Amanecer Press, a nonprofit news service, and Carlos Payan Velver, a federal deputy from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Mar. 9, 1995 enabling legislation for the peace negotiations recognizes the EZLN as an armed group and therefore exempts the rebels, but not the paramilitaries, from weapons searches. [NAP 1/2/98; LJ 1/4/98]

On Jan. 3, at the same time as the military action at La Realidad, a group of some 200 soldiers tried to establish an encampment about 300 meters from X'oyep, Chenalho, a community filled with refugees from paramilitary attacks in the area. Some 200 refugees, mostly women and children, quickly blocked the soldiers, holding them off for four hours and chanting, in Tzotzil, "Chiapas, Chiapas isn't a military base, get the army out!" The civilians backed off after military riot police and a helicopter arrived, but the soldiers failed to set up camp. [LJ 1/4/98]

The Mexican military has also been active outside of Chiapas. On Jan. 2 troops moved into the small community of El Cucuyachi, in the Atoyac Sierra region of Guerrero, ostensibly to prevent a confrontation between a local paramilitary group and the Revolutionary Popular Army (EPR), a rebel group that operates principally in Mexico's south and central states. The PRD director in Atoyac, Wilebaldo Rojas Arellano, charged that the troop deployment was meant to be "a blow against the PRD." The military has repeatedly accused the Guerrero PRD of having links to the EPR. [LJ 1/3/98]

In a communique dated Dec. 26, Mexico's rebel EZLN said it was "obvious" that the paramilitaries involved in the Acteal massacre "had military preparation of the type called 'special commando.'" During the massacre the paramilitaries cut open the uteruses of several pregnant women they had murdered. The EZLN said that this "forms part of the 'teachings' that Guatemalan soldiers (the so-called 'Kaibiles') gave their counterparts at the beginning of the Zapatista uprising... A select group of Federal Army officers took the 'Kaibil' course. Since then, new groups have been trained in the neighboring country." [LJ 12/28/97] [As of May 1994, four Mexican officers had graduated from the Kaibil counterinsurgency school in Guatemala--see Update #226.]

Nuevo Amanecer Press reports that in 1996 the US Army Special Forces began a massive training program of Mexico's Airborne Special Forces Groups (GAFE) as part of the US "war on drugs." "From fiscal year 1996 until fiscal year 1997, around 3,200 Mexican soldiers will receive training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by the Green Berets' 7th Special Forces Group," the news service writes. The Mexican news agency APRO reported on Dec. 25 that "[a]n important detachment, composed of [GAFE] members...was sent to the community of Acteal... The soldiers of the GAFE, experts in counterinsurgency and specialized in operating in rough terrain, as can be found in Chiapas, immediately set up three roadblocks on the highway that leads from the Chenalho to Acteal in order to meticulously search all vehicles which passed through the troubled area.'" According to a Dec. 26 article in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada, more than a dozen young men were kidnapped and tortured in a recent GAFE operation in the state of Jalisco; one of the victims died.

Nuevo Amanecer Press reports that one of the GAFE officers charged in Jalisco, Lt. Col. Julian Guerrero Barrios, is a graduate of the US Army's School of the Americas, where he took a course in 1981 entitled "Commando Operations." "[T]he mastermind behind Mexico's counterinsurgency strategy in Chiapas, Gen. Mario Renan Castillo Fernandez, has received instruction at Fort Bragg as well... We find it odd that the two biggest recipients of US military aid in Latin America, Colombia and Mexico, are also the two Latin American countries with the greatest number of massacres carried out by paramilitary organizations connected to their respective armed forces." [NAP 12/28/97]

On Dec. 29 the New York Times ran a front-page article saying that the US is "providing the Mexican military with extensive covert intelligence support and training hundreds of its officers." The assistance "has included training, equipment and advice from the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] to establish an elite army intelligence unit that has quietly moved to the forefront of Mexico's anti-drug effort." The training has been under way since 1994, replacing a CIA program from the late 1980s. The earlier program was closed down after three failed missions, including an Apr. 11, 1988 commando raid in Caborca which killed four apprentice welders; the CIA-trained soldiers mistook them for drug traffickers.

In the current effort the CIA is training a 90-member unit called the Center for Anti-Narcotics Investigations. The Times writes that "Mexican and United States military officials said there was nothing to stop the transfer of American-trained army officers to similar special forces units that might be deployed against leftist insurgents in southern states like Guerrero and Chiapas... Several American officials compared the program to the CIA's work in Colombia, where the agency has been credited with critical help in the capture of major drug traffickers." [NYT 12/29/97]

Corrections: A typographical error in Update #413, item #1, slightly garbled a quote from an EZLN communique. It should have read: "Chiapas government radio transmissions (intercepted by the EZLN), in the area of Chenalho and at the time the massacre was occurring," show that "Chiapas state public security agents gave support to the attack and, in the hours of the evening and the night, dedicated themselves to gathering corpses to hide the magnitude of the massacre." Item #2 noted that "Gen. Mario Hernan Castillo" was listed as a witness to an accord between the state of Chiapas and the paramilitary group "Development, Peace and Justice." But we failed to point out an error in the accord; the correct name of the then-military commander of the Chiapas region is Gen. Mario Renan Castillo.

ISSN#: 1084-922X. The Weekly News Update on the Americas is published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. A one-year subscription (52 issues) is $25. To subscribe, send a check or money order for US $25 payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. Please specify if you want the electronic or print version: they are identical in content, but the electronic version is delivered directly to your email address; the print version is sent via first class mail. For more information about electronic subscriptions, contact wnu@igc.apc.org. Back issues and source materials are available on request.

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